Eat Pray Love

I saw this movie on opening night, having few expectations due to the fact that I have not read the book and only saw limited promotional material on the movie.  The movie theater was filled with women, mostly older, and maybe a handful of men.  The movie isn't a classical chick flick, which I define as a movie whose male characters are there only to be perfect foils to the female characters (see Steel Magnolias), but it definitely seems to have little appeal to men.  I think the book probably would do a better job of describing the transformation that the author goes through than the movie did, but I can't be sure.  The movie traces a woman's personal journey beginning with a divorce, through a love affair with a younger man, then onto a year-long journey from Italy to India to Bali.  The woman, who begins the story as a travel writer, delves into divorce for reasons that are not all that well explained.  The man she married seems to love her, although she feels "dead" in the marriage, and he does ignore a potential trip to Aruba that she brings up in the car while he is trying to explain that he wants to go back to school, maybe to be a teacher.  Julia Roberts carries the emotional weight of the movie, beginning with an acknowledgment that "I'm in real trouble here," when praying for direction with her marriage.  She then becomes involved with a younger man, who introduces her to Sanskrit worship based on the teachings of a guru.  This relationship is casual but intense, and Roberts does a good job of "disappearing" into the relationship with the younger man, David.  When she breaks off this relationship, she decides to spend a year finding herself on a year-long journey.  The story does revolve around three simple ideas -- she learns to eat and enjoy life in Italy, to pray and forgive herself in India, and to love in Bali.  There is an uplifting message of personal healing in the movie, but the hard work of immersion in so many foreign cultures is glossed over.  Also, the personal journey the heroine embarks on comes at the expense of a conventional marriage, which probably deserves to be defended instead of walked away from.  Most people do not have the luxury of spending a year finding themselves, but even those that do often find themselves returning to things that matter, like family and faith, in more conventional ways.  That's what makes this story interesting, I suppose, but it also makes it a little hard to swallow.